There IS life after 30: Here's how I spend mine

Once I aged past my "carefree" 20's I found myself a little lost. How do I become a perfect partner, mother, career person, etc? The answer (that took me almost 6 years to come to): nobody is perfect, and it's OK not to be! But, if I want to be the best partner, mother, or career person I want to be, I have to learn to take care of myself first.

​This page contains a rundown of things I do to take care of myself, ways I've worked on my relationships with my partner, my children and my family and the things I do to strengthen my careers as a professional registered nurse as well as a sales woman. I hope that this page gives others a safe place to explore that female void that occurs between ages 30 and 50.

Feel free to add to my discussions, but be respectful. Shaming of any kind is not tolerated on this site: if you're posts are not supportive or appear hurtful in any way, they will be removed.

I gave you an update on our neighborhood, now time for a run down of our rental. Before you look at this, some background. The rental/purchasing market in Auckland is absolutely ridiculous. I know that New York and San Francisco are as well, but it's out of control here. There is little to no regulation surrounding whom can purchase property in Auckland and no real entity that holds rental owners accountable for basic care of a property. Renters in Auckland have little to no support. And the majority of owners here are in another country and only care about one thing: making money on their rental. Rentals are not shown to people when a person requests: the management companies set up a viewing for about 30 minutes, in which all interested parties can come in and put in their applications. There can be anywhere from 10 to 30 people that also come to look at a property. And if the agent just doesn't like how you look (say you got stuck in the rain and your pants got muddy on the way to the viewing), they will just throw out your application without a second thought. We found out that people attach head shots of their families/other rental group as well as cover letters to their applications to push them to the top of the pack. It's freaking ridiculous. Keith spent a week prior to us coming out looking at roughly 20 different rentals and applied for 15. The home we are currently in is the only one that approved us. To be fair, we were looking in a specific area that is very difficult to get in to. We were concerned with the area schools (our kids are in one of the top-ranked primary/intermediate schools in Auckland), price and the commute to Keith's work. Because of the island's layout, I wasn't sure where the best area for us would be. To give you an idea of my issue, here are some maps to look at. The first image is the layout of New Zealand in general: Auckland is highlighted on the North Island.

This next picture is a general overlay of the city of Auckland:

And finally, this is a close-up image of the area we are living in currently. The red star indicates where Keith works (in what is called Auckland CBD or Central Business District). We live in the suburb of Mount Eden, indicated by the blue star. We were warned early on to avoid anything on the "North Island" ie: anything you have to use Highway 1 to get to (indicated by the purple arrow). That one highway is the ONLY way to get to the CBD from the North Island and is constantly backed up. HOWEVER, it's much more affordable than the areas near Keith's work.

Most of the homes that are near the CBD are either super-old or brand-spanking new (recently built over super-old) and ridiculously expensive. The area we live in currently has homes that are roughly 1500 square feet, built around the 1920s and 50s and go for $1.5 million and up. The home we are currently in would probably go for about $1.2 million at auction---Keep that in mind as you look at the pictures. It will blow your mind--not in a good way. These pictures are also taken in the period prior to our crate arriving: it's been over a month at this point. I did break down and buy a TV--it was driving me crazy. ALSO, tips for viewing slideshows on here: they work best on a desktop/laptop. You can hover over the pictures and choose to pause so that you can go through the slides at your own pace. Sorry about the speed, still can't figure out how to slow down the transitions. My bad.

One last thing before I end this post: I want to give a quick shout-out to the spectacular help we got from REI in Lonetree, CO to help us pick out new sleeping bags before we got here. They helped us pick out ones that work best in this new climate and they've been amazing! Also, if you're looking for a new bag, I love my new Kelty--it comes with a removable blanket that fits inside the bag and is seriously life changing. Keith and the kids are totes jelly :)